[TC] Balance of Power Plot Walkthrough

[dillpickle]

Quick question. When guarding the base when your marines are trying to break in. How long roughly did you have to guard it for?
I ended up using basic scrub marines (mainly due having a scabbard with 10 scrub marines sat there on happenstance... Lazyness ftw).
I was there for roughly 30-45 minutes waiting for them to make it in. And was just curious if that was because I used rubbish marines or if thats about average?
Don't get me wrong, if that is the case I would choose to use rubbish marines because it was really good fun wasting all those terrans consequence free.
If its normally that long, then it doesn't matter what marines you use.

Speed is relative to the marines skill - fresh out the box marines will take forever, 10 max 5 star marines will have it done in a few minutes.

[Infekted]

Cool So if you wanted to smash tons and tons of dirty terran ships and have a massive scrap, without losing a drop of rep. Use scrubs

[Thunders]

I did that and it took me a couple of hours clearing the neighboring sector of all the pursuing Terran ships.
I was worried that they'd blow up the research station while the marines were busy, so I chose to wait for them to dock OOS with my Cobra/Tyr ready to fight in the neighboring sector.
I switch to the Tyr very time my Cobra ran out of missiles and an ammo resupplier was on the way there through Nepture.

Having the X-TREME rank made the game spawn literally hundreds of ships: over a dozen of M2s and M1s, the Tokyos being full of fighters, especially M3s.
Too bad none of the capital ships dropped weapons or at least shields...

[Infekted]

Ahhhh that sounds like fun I'm only at battlemaster (I have a rule whereby my trade rank must stay ahead of my combat rank). So only had Yokohamas plus spam M8s and fighters. I just sat there in a boreas rinsing everything that came towards me.
My Yokohamas killed list went from zero to 25 And it was the first time I've had loads and loads of shadow missiles fired at me. That was fun too

They did drop lots of missiles, I was going to send my scabbard back to collect them but they had all vanished after it had made it back to base

[Thunders]

And it was the first time I've had loads and loads of shadow missiles fired at me. That was fun too

Those were Spectre missiles (260k dmg). Shadow missiles do 755k dmg and they're Skirnir-only missiles. I doubt you fought against M7Ms in that mission...

They did drop lots of missiles, I was going to send my scabbard back to collect them but they had all vanished after it had made it back to base

You should have used a Springblossom. All my UTs fly Springblossoms. 2k cargo, 360 m/s speed, 600 MJ shielding.

[AjRyder]

And it was the first time I've had loads and loads of shadow missiles fired at me. That was fun too

Those were Spectre missiles (260k dmg). Shadow missiles do 755k dmg and they're Skirnir-only missiles. I doubt you fought against M7Ms in that mission...

They did drop lots of missiles, I was going to send my scabbard back to collect them but they had all vanished after it had made it back to base

You should have used a Springblossom. All my UTs fly Springblossoms. 2k cargo, 360 m/s speed, 600 MJ shielding.

I only use a springy its my fav ship

[you_rebel_scum]

I did that and it took me a couple of hours clearing the neighboring sector of all the pursuing Terran ships.
I was worried that they'd blow up the research station while the marines were busy, so I chose to wait for them to dock OOS with my Cobra/Tyr ready to fight in the neighboring sector.
I switch to the Tyr very time my Cobra ran out of missiles and an ammo resupplier was on the way there through Nepture.

Having the X-TREME rank made the game spawn literally hundreds of ships: over a dozen of M2s and M1s, the Tokyos being full of fighters, especially M3s.
Too bad none of the capital ships dropped weapons or at least shields...

first time i did that mission i got my ass handed to me, next time i used the skirnir and nearly got killed again from all the fighters swarming me

[Thunders]

That's why I launched the max number of Hammerhead barrages (usually leading to overkill, but in this mission ammo is your last concern) needed to destroy each Terran capital ship within range and immediately switched to Flails for fighters, usually 5 shots for every M3 (Scimitars are tough) and 2-3 for M4s and M5s.

[StarTroll]

That's why I launched the max number of Hammerhead barrages (usually leading to overkill, but in this mission ammo is your last concern) needed to destroy each Terran capital ship within range and immediately switched to Flails for fighters, usually 5 shots for every M3 (Scimitars are tough) and 2-3 for M4s and M5s.

Hammer Heavy Torps BTW, not hammerheads

[Thunders]

My mistake. This reminded me that we can't buy/manufacture Hammerhead Missiles. More powerful, faster and with better cycle time than Firestorm Torpedos.

[Dave500]

I did that mission with noob marines and Xtreme fight rank, I just docked at an IS mining facility to escape the lagfest .

[Aydan]

It's a bit of mystery to me why you fight at all Sure, it's fun to let your entire fleet to go on rampage in missions like this, but to be honest, the whole plot can be completed with nothing more like a single real fight... the mission where you have to get the Mjollnir bailed while the Bloodhound Gang is hired to act as decoys.

In the mission with the Scabbard and the marines, you just need to sit in your Kestrel, flying around a bit and leading the entire fleet away. If your Scabbard has docked at the station, you just need to fly back to that station at high speed and talk to the mission NPC. All ships will be automatically removed by the MD. This works regardless which rank you currently have, from harmless to X-treme. The whole fleet is trying to catch you and ignores the Scabbard. As long as the Scabbard isn't in range of the capship turrets, and you're in sector... who cares?

Why would you risk any rep or precious ships, if a Kestrel and a TM are enough to finish every mission without firing a single shot

[Thunders]

I did that mission with noob marines and Xtreme fight rank, I just docked at an IS mining facility to escape the lagfest .

Why would you risk any rep or precious ships, if a Kestrel and a TM are enough to finish every mission without firing a single shot

It's ok if you lose the TM after the hacking process, you'll be told that the marines were able to transmit the tech data.

Now something both of you should consider, since you didn't eliminate that fleet: IT IS STILL THERE.
At least that's what happened in my game. The mission ended but the fleet didn't jump out. I really had to clear that sector completely, as annoying and time consuming as it proved to be, because my UTs kept going there for deals.

[Aydan]

The mission isn't over when the Scabbard docks at the Deep Space station, it' over when you talk with the NPC at that station, THEN the fleet jumps out You missed the last step

[Thunders]

Nope, I was given the next mission right after I received a notification that, although I lost the TP, the marines were able to send the data.
So that mission was over and I was left with some cleanup to do.

[Infekted]

And it was the first time I've had loads and loads of shadow missiles fired at me. That was fun too

Those were Spectre missiles (260k dmg). Shadow missiles do 755k dmg and they're Skirnir-only missiles. I doubt you fought against M7Ms in that mission...

They did drop lots of missiles, I was going to send my scabbard back to collect them but they had all vanished after it had made it back to base

You should have used a Springblossom. All my UTs fly Springblossoms. 2k cargo, 360 m/s speed, 600 MJ shielding.

Whatever. Its the only time I've ever felt vaguelly in danger in a vanilla game...

I know that the springy is. Use them extensively in terran space. Doesn't help that when the fleet gets vanished when your scabbard docks at the dark base, all the drops vanished too.

[Magnu]

The suspension of disbelief required for this plot makes the whole thing pointless. I spent nearly 2 hours trying to cap the Mjolnir before giving up and going to the pub. I think it's time for me to move on.

[you_rebel_scum]

I spent nearly 2 hours trying to cap the Mjolnir before giving up and going to the pub.

hahahaha thats my solution to everything

[Infekted]

As Scychotic told me, its better to slap it really hard, tap it a few times untill it either bails or dies. And keep reloading. You can get an "attempt" every couple of minutes. It threw me as well.. I was using my usual techinique of chipping away (30-50% success rate on pirates normally, but totally failed on the Mjol).
I found the scimitar was perfect for it. Exact same top speed, use 6 EMPCs to strips its shields then hit it a few times with 1 empc.

[Thunders]

Or ram it with the X-shuttle (or a Falcon Sentinel) then fire 2 IREs. It worked for me.